Monday, August 21, 2006

Day 10, part 3. Take it to the max

At about eight hours some major cracks appeared near the top of the pot. There had also been a lot of steam coming from the insulation around the pot so I had taken all the accessible insulation out. It looks like the steam came from the pot drying out. The insulation was so effective, the steam was condensing on the inside of the oil drum.

The good news was that the coals were now very hot. I heated some metal rods and hammered them to form traditional shaped hooked tandoor skewers.

At nine hours the fire was really roaring. Very uncomfortable to get close. The clay wasn't glowing, so we must have been somewhere between 300°C and 700°C. It certainly felt and looked entirely different from 300°C.

To get it hotter I fired a paint stripping gun into the air vent.

At ten hours there is a raging inferno with about 4kg of charcoal in the tandoor. The oven thermometer is sitting outside the tandoor, inside the oil drum, and registering about 100°C.

We decided to bake a potato in the tandoor. It took about 10mins and was delicious, if a little burnt on the outside.

I'm writing the blog now at 14 hours. The interior of the tandoor is back down to a much more comfortable 300°C. I'll probably put a metal lid back on in about an hour or so and then see how its looking in the morning. We've burnt about 14kg of charcoal today.